I sometimes get unusual things in the email – no comments thanks – such as the full post-conference write up of a cards and commercial payments conference in the USA last month.
Here’s a few quotes and notes that caught my attention ...
Marcie Verdin, Group Head of Large Market Segment, Global Commercial Products (why do people have such strange job titles in American firms) for MasterCard Worldwide stated that there are $90 trillion commercial payments made each year, of which cards were responsible for less than $1 trillion.
Oh yes, being a US conference, I guess all of the other payments must be made with paper cheques.
As if to back that up Peggy Yankovich, Senior Vice President for Global Transaction Banking Division at HSBC, stated that the total amount of American B2B payments were currently worth around $18 trillion per annum. The majority of these - $14 trillion worth – are for transactions worth over $5,000 each. What is astounding therefore is that cheques accounted for around 70% of B2B payments.
Get electronified America!!
Thinking that this might be the case, it was nice to see that einvoicing made the agenda with Henry Ijams, Managing Director and Founder of PayStream Advisors, noting that half of all companies were evaluating einvoicing and one in five are currently using this process.
Conversely, it was a bit disappointing that 80% don’t use einvoicing though and, most tellingly, 64% said that they process fewer than 25% of their invoices electronically.
A long way to go to get efficiency in those processes.
Just to get in on the act, Darren Parslow, Head of Global Commercial Solutions at Visa, estimated that prepaid is worth about $3 trillion of payments.
Interestingly, this was the figure that TowerGroup put on prepaid market for 2010 ... back in 2005!
Tony Cunningham, Vice President Business Development at UATP, then made a point that surprised even yours truly: ‘30% of the largest global retailers now accepted an alternative form of payment such as PayPal’.
Wow!
There’s a whole load of other useful stuff for those interested in commercial payments, so may well be worth a look.
You can download the complete post-conference report here, or checkout more about the commercial payments world at Commercial Payments International (CPI) ... and thanks to Joanne Robinson, their founder and CEO, for sending the info over.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
